


Post-Its

by anonstarbuck



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 14:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6808723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonstarbuck/pseuds/anonstarbuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Mulder notices a book of poems by e.e. cummings in her drawer, he starts leaving post-its everywhere for Scully to find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ee cummings

After Mulder notices a book of poems by e.e. cummings in her drawer, he starts leaving post-its everywhere for Scully to find. She finds

 

_your slightest look easily will unclose me_

_though i have closed myself as fingers,_

_you open always petal by petal myself_

_as Spring opens (touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose_

 

inside one of her work shoes, the morning after he murmured that he loved her for the first time, right into the space between her jaw and her throat. She discovers

 _i like to feel the spine_  
_of your body and its bones,and the trembling_  
_-firm-smooth ness and which i will_  
_again and again and again_  
_kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,_  
_i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz_  
_of your electric fur_

stuck under the coffee he brought her once, after they’d stayed up all night after a difficult case, washing it off the other with their mouths and their fingers.

She rolls her eyes and pretends that this is the cheesiest thing, but she takes the post its home, every time, and sticks them lovingly inside her journal. Mulder knows she does this but never mentions it.

One day, when she is in his kitchen making coffee, she goes back to the bedroom while he is in the shower. On the bed there is a ring next to a post it, which reads:

_I imagine that yes is the only living thing_

She slips the ring on and her clothes off and joins him under the warm spray.


	2. Albert Einstein

Scully found a dog-eared copy of her senior thesis on Einstein tucked in Mulder’s drawer with a couple of old Playboys. She grinned at his categorisation skills and thought about her journal, pages covered with post-its from him with lines from e.e. cummings.     
  
When he tried to raise chickens to have free-range eggs for the house, he was upset when he was chased out by a particularly fat one with a cantankerous temper. He had gingerly walked up the porch steps with beak-marks on his finger and a defeated look on his face. She had placed a band-aid and a kiss on it and had left  
  
_A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new_

on his pillow, and a copy of the Kamasutra underneath it, to cheer him up and remind him that sometimes you have to practise in order to get something right.  
  
When he was driving them through the long dirt road that would take them home, he had slipped his hand from her knee to her thigh, and had inched his way between her legs while she squirmed against him, and sighed when he slid a long and inquisitive middle finger inside her. When she came, he leaned across the console to kiss her and the car swerved off the road. She shook her head, kissed him back and patted his hand. He then found  
  
_Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves….Thank you, S.  
_  
on the steering wheel the next morning.   
  
When he found   
  
_The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science_  
  
on the positive pregnancy test pinned on the wall of his home-office, he cried and cried and made dinner and thought of baby names while he waited for her to come home.


	3. The Post-Its

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on a tumblr post.

**for[@starrynight-over-thepast](https://tmblr.co/muoPUuUAlVRq5d_sgnFEpMQ) & [@storybycorey](https://tmblr.co/mCo4Ay-fT1rnaNLAhRQVQmQ) , who asked, in [this post](http://anonstarbuck.tumblr.com/post/146961444967/starrynight-over-thepast-waiho-waena).**  
  
It was strange, really, this habit. _She_ was the one who carried the little notebook everywhere and took painstaking notes. She’d hover over dead bodies, or sit across witnesses and suspects alike, and scribble on the hand-sized notepad while Mulder put sunflower seeds or evidence in his mouth.  

Mulder stares. He squints at things. He inspects and talks. And talks and talks. He does not take notes.

And yet she’s sure, she’s positive about the post-its. He keeps pads lying around but she’s never seen their use. She thought at first that she’d find them stuck to the files, cheerful yellow side-notes punctuating paranormal gruesomeness like bizarre heart-shaped dots over i’s. But nothing. There’s just his scruffy professor scrawl and a few coffee stains.

It’s always just a line or two. She’s seen him write while he thinks she’s sleeping, while they’re flying or driving or typing up reports. She’s seen him put them inside his coat pocket or his briefcase and she has respected his need for privacy. She has not looked, but the writing has become more frequent, urgent even, and she’s getting curious.

“Mulder,” she starts and tries to look nonchalant as she inspects a nail under the glare of basement flourescence, “what’s with the post-its?”

She can feel him look up to study her. She has seen him profiling people countless times. He stares and squints. He inspects and talks, and assesses and runs insane ideas past her until she has to tell him to shut up, to get out of her room, to get some sleep, tomorrow Mulder, tomorrow. Yet now he is dead silent and the absence of his voice is disquieting. She can no longer pretend to be looking at her hands. She meets his eye from across the room and he leans forward to put his elbows on the table. His hands lace together except for his long index fingers which press against each other to make the shape of a gun. He rests his chin on the barrel of his fingertips, thumbs poised to shoot.  

“Notes to self, Scully,” he finally replies but doesn’t look away, and the focus of his undivided attention pinpricks her skin like the California sun did while her father was stationed there. She’s only seen her partner this single-minded while he was studying a particularly difficult or personal case, and that one time she’d walked in on him with a porn tape on mute. 

She wants to chide herself for her nervousness and attempts to sound offhand and professional when she asks him, “Anything you want to run by me?” 

His chin lifts and lowers until his lips are pressed against his two forefingers, as if holding in a secret. It had taken two years before she could recognise the rhythm of his voice, read his tone and cadence like a favourite passage of a well-loved book. It took another two to learn his breathing. She could measure time and distance with the sound of his exhale– where he was located in a room, if he was tired, how many steps it would take to get from wherever she was to wherever he stood. He breathes now and she swallows. It is a strong inhale, one that comes with decisions and heartbreak. 

He stands up and walks over to her and as he breathes out, she knows he’s four steps away, three, two, and he hands her a small piece of paper. She looks up to see his eyes have shifted from grey to green and despite the self-assured gait he used to get to her, there’s vulnerability there. When she looks down she’s embarrassed to see that the hand holding the post-it is shaking slightly.

_Sometimes I think you want me to touch you._

He tilts his head like a question mark and his Adam’s apple bobs slightly as he swallows and waits.

In her time with him she has learned a little about her own breathing as well. She knows that she holds her breath when she thinks she’s going to cry, when emotion gets the better of her. Scully’s breastbone is full of basement air and possibility when she tells him.

“I do.”


End file.
